I'm looking for a simple way to determine the rough amount of time per day I spend on a computer. This can be a difficult task if you try to monitor processes, key presses, mouse clicks and the like, because one can be doing anything from thinking about a coding problem, reading a web article, talking on the phone, or gone off walking the dog. The computer cannot read my mind. Since I leave computers on 24/7 monitoring log-ins won't work.

I hit on the idea of logging how much time the computer spends in screensaver mode. My error would then be no greater than the product of the idle-time-to-screensaver with the number of times it goes into screensaver mode. Subtracting this from 24 hours would give me an estimate which would be reasonable for my purposes.

The problem is: I don't know how to log when the screensaver turns on and off. I am running Ubuntu 10.10 at the moment on most machines, about to start upgrading to 11.04 on some of them.

Any ideas?

[edit] After more googling I hit upon the dbus-monitor which looked like it might work, but is missing an important ingredient. Here's the script I am running which launches the monitor as a daemon:

The second column is obviously unix UTC in seconds. The missing ingredient is it doesn't identify whether the screensaver is on or off! I suppose I could assume they toggle from the time NameAcquired happens, but it makes me queasy that there might be a missing or extra event I can't anticipate which would throw everything out of sync.

Are time management tools like Hamster an option?
–
Nathan OsmanJun 15 '11 at 6:21

I just installed it. It isn't clear how it will handle time I don't specifically log to tasks yet, but it does look interesting.
–
jkcunninghamJun 16 '11 at 15:07

I've had it on now for half an hour or so and it looks like it requires that it be started each time. That's a drawback. I'm not trying to clock particular time for, say, charging purposes, just time spent at the computer. And if I forget to turn it on that time will be unaccounted for. I'm still playing with it though.
–
jkcunninghamJun 16 '11 at 16:29

1

This is a very good question in regards to measuring time spend on the PC. Very nice idea about the screensaver.
–
Luis Alvarado♦Feb 14 '12 at 21:52

5 Answers
5

I would like to thanks and contribute back a simple, raw script (can be improved), put it on startup applications with:

xterm -e logSessionLock.sh

it is system crash/blackout prepared too.
It is not heavly tested... but is working great til now.
it will create 2 files, one at $HOME (the log) another at /tmp (the sys crash workaround)

logSessionLock.sh

#!/bin/bash
logFile="."`basename $0`".log"
function FUNClog {
strTime=`gnome-screensaver-command --time`
strDate=`date +"%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"`
strLog="$strDate ($1) $strTime"
}
function FUNCwriteLog {
echo $strLog >>$HOME/$logFile
echo $strLog
}
active=false
firstTime=true
# restores last log entry in case of a system crash
strLog=`cat "/tmp/$logFile.tmp"`
FUNCwriteLog
echo "" >"/tmp/$logFile.tmp"
if [[ -n "$strLog" ]]; then #if has something, it was active when the system crashed
active=true
fi
while true; do
if gnome-screensaver-command --query |grep -q "The screensaver is active"; then
if ! $active; then
# restore the saved tmp log
strLog=`cat "/tmp/$logFile.tmp"`
FUNCwriteLog
# update log (can be off when this line is reached? once it seem to happen...)
FUNClog BEGIN
FUNCwriteLog #logs the begin time
active=true
else
FUNClog ON #stores the ammount of time the screensaver has been ON
echo $strLog >"/tmp/$logFile.tmp"
fi
else
if $active; then
FUNCwriteLog #saves the ammount of time the screensaver has been ON
FUNClog OFF
FUNCwriteLog
echo "" >"/tmp/$logFile.tmp"
active=false
fi
fi
sleep 1
done

the log is like this:

20120214-191528 (BEGIN) The screensaver has been active for 0 seconds.
20120214-193602 (ON) The screensaver has been active for 1234 seconds.
20120214-193603 (OFF) The screensaver is not currently active.

The "Workrave" package not only tracks whether you're using your computer and helps you take breaks during the day, but also provides a nice set of statistics, both raw (in a text file) and via a GUI (Daily usage: 5:41:00 for Jul 21). The stats also include stuff like minutes of mouse usage, mouse movement distance, keystrokes etc.

Install it from the official repositories, add it to your menu bar, right click and choose "statistics". You'll get a calendar to choose the day you want to know about. Or look at the data in ~/.workrave/historystats

This looks like a very workable solution. I'd like to find a way to disable the "microbreak" reminders which can be rather annoying, but otherwise it appears to accumulate just what I'm looking for. Thanks!
–
jkcunninghamJul 26 '11 at 2:06

@jkcunningham It is easy to enable or disable the microbreaks, rest breaks, or daily limit from the right-click/Preferences dialog. Though, of course, it is good for your eyes, wrists, arms, back etc. to actually take regular breaks, and workrave makes it easy (even fun) to do that while also making it easy to postpone or skip the occasional break if you're right in the middle of something.
–
nealmcbJul 26 '11 at 16:49

This is a more complete script. You can trigger it from cron every minute and if the screensaver is active, it will record how long it's been active. Once it deactivates it'll take the last measurement and add it to ~/Screensaver.log. If you run it from cron it could be inaccurate for up to 59 seconds each time the screensaver deactivates.

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=':0'
if gnome-screensaver-command -q 2>&1 | grep -q 'is active'; then
# this will overwrite the file each time.
gnome-screensaver-command --time > /tmp/ScreensaverActiveTime
# if the screensaver is not active and we have the file from last time this ran ...
elif [ -e /tmp/ScreensaverActiveTime ]; then
# append it to our log and ...
cat /tmp/ScreensaverActiveTime >> ~/Screensaver.log
# remove the file. It will be recreated once the screensaver activates again.
rm /tmp/ScreensaverActiveTime
fi

I like this approach. There might be a corner case issue if a machine goes down while in screensaver mode leaving a hanging /tmp/screensaveractivetime to be logged. For my purposes this would get around it: #!/bin/bash ## 4 states: ## * working ## * not working, but screensaver not yet active ## * screensaver active ## * computer power failure or turned off ## I want to log the first two states export DISPLAY=':0' SS_LAG=10 if gnome-screensaver-command -q 2>&1 | grep -q 'is inactive'; then DSTR=date "+%Y %m %d %H %M echo "$SS_LAG $DSTR" >> ${HTDOCS}/data/work.log fi
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jkcunninghamJun 16 '11 at 15:35

I use uptime command, but it does not give the system's active/inactive time.
uptime gives a one line display of the following information. The current time, how long the system has been running, how many users are currently logged on, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes.

My current uptime is 81 days 23 hours 25 minutes. I assure you I haven't been sitting in front of a computer that long. Thanks, but that won't work. I'm looking for a way to determine - roughly - how long I sit in front of computers on a daily basis. That's why I'm looking at the screensaver active/inactive times.
–
jkcunninghamMay 8 '11 at 15:48

That's good. Yeah, as I mentioned it won't give you the system's active/inactive time and I don't know a way to calculate it from screensaver active/inactive times.
–
Chethan S.May 8 '11 at 15:51